Narcissism within the scientific community: interview with Bruno Lemaitre

Abstract

Bruno Lemaitre (born September 21, 1965, in Lille, France) is an immunologist and professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland). His research focuses on the mechanisms of innate immunity and endosymbiosis in Drosophila. One of his early discoveries demonstrated that the Toll receptor protein and its downstream signaling pathway are essential components of the fruit fly immune response (Lemaitre et al., 1996). The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine recognized the findings of Lemaitre et al. (1996). This pioneering work on innate immunity facilitated the identification of Toll-like receptors as crucial mediators of human innate immunity. Bruno has received several research awards, including the Noury, Thorlet and Lazare Prize of the French Academy of Sciences (2001), the First Prize of the Schlumberger Foundation (2002), the William B. Coley Prize (2003), the Lucien Tartois Prize of the Foundation for Medical Research (2006), and the Liliane Bettencourt Prize for Life Sciences (2010). Lemaitre is also the author of several books on the subject of this interview and a book on the philosophy of Michael Polanyi (Lemaitre, 2022).